The Hidden Alliance Between Tech and Government
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 8 March 2024
⏱️ 41 minutes
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Summary
The practice of surveillance capitalism—the widespread private collection and commodification of personal data—is well understood. Less well understood is the extent to which the U.S. government purchases this data in the commercial marketplace to use it for intelligence and law enforcement purposes.
Byron Tau, when he was a reporter with The Wall Street Journal, did more than anyone to bring this practice to public light. Jack Goldsmith sat down recently with Tau to discuss his new book on the topic, “Means of Control: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government is Creating a New American Surveillance State.” They discussed how the private broker market works, why the government is able to purchase bulk private data with relatively few legal restrictions, and the threat to privacy and civil liberties that inheres in the practice. They also discussed why this form of data is so important to the government and the prospects for reform of the relatively unregulated practice.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
| 0:04.0 | To access an ad-free version of the Lawfair Podcast, |
| 0:08.0 | become a material supporter of Lawfair at Patreon.com slash Lawfair. That's Patreon.com |
| 0:16.4 | slash Lawfair. Also check out Lawfair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, lawfare no bull, and the aftermath. Hello everybody my name is |
| 0:39.6 | my name is Jacob Collier and I just wanted to quickly let you know that my brand new album |
| 0:43.0 | Jesse volume 4 is out now. See you're all out for the battle. |
| 0:53.0 | I don't think about. |
| 0:55.0 | I don't think about. Well, you're not supposed to look up your spouse or your lover or your neighbors, not pursuant to some lawful government mission, but generally speaking |
| 1:16.1 | unclassified open source information has a lot fewer restrictions than the classified |
| 1:21.3 | information that the government uses in more targeted surveillance. |
| 1:25.4 | And so it has become easier to use inside government, easier to give to people who don't necessarily |
| 1:31.5 | have clearances, and easier to share with American partners and allies that we potentially don't have a deep and long intelligence sharing history with. |
| 1:40.4 | And so it's become in some ways the easy button for government agencies to be able to purchase large amounts of this data and share it with people like police officers who don't necessarily have security clearances or other countries in some cases. |
| 1:54.6 | I'm Jack Goldsmith and this is the Law Fair Podcast March 8, 2024. |
| 2:01.3 | The practice of surveillance capitalism, the widespread The widespread private collection and commodification of personal data is well understood. |
| 2:10.0 | Less well understood is the extent to which the U government purchases this data in the commercial marketplace to use it for intelligence and law enforcement purposes. |
| 2:19.0 | Myron Tao, when he was a reporter with the Wall Street Journal, did more than anyone to bring this practice to public light. |
| 2:26.1 | I sat down recently with Tao to discuss his new book on the topic, |
| 2:29.5 | Means of Control, how the hidden alliance of tech and government is creating a new American |
| 2:35.0 | surveillance state. We discussed how the private broker market works, why the |
| 2:40.0 | government is able to purchase bulk private data with relatively few legal restrictions |
| 2:44.9 | and the threat to privacy and civil liberties that adheres in the practice. We also discuss |
... |
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